Friday, December 18, 2009

Fort Collins, Part 1

Hi from Colorado!

My flight to Colorado went as smoothly as possible. A 4:30am wake-up call and a drowsy ride in the car to the airport (thank you Peter!) got me to the airport an hour and a half before my flight to Denver. Southwest is still the most "cyclist-friendly" airline I've been on. Flat, reasonable (if that is possible) bike fee. A quick and quite bumpy two-hour flight later, I arrived in Denver at 8:20am Colorado time. My bags were waiting, my parents were there, and my bike appeared almost immediately- things couldn't have gone smoother that morning.

We made a detour in Boulder on our way back to Fort Collins. A nice, hot coffee at The Unseen Bean, roasted by a blind man kept us warm for some shopping on Pearl Street. Our Christmas shopping efforts were focused on the wonderful Patagonia and Prana stores there. I may or may not have gotten a couple of sweet presents that I may or may not know about ;-) The Boulder trip ended with some amazing Ethopian lentil soup from a little soup and gelato cafe (random?!). I'm pretty sure I slept the entire way home and groggily made it through my training when I got back. It sure is nice to be with my family though :-)

Tuesday's highlight was a warm yoga class at Corepower Yoga with Brenna and her friend Cassandra. They have a free week of yoga for new students so of course I had to take advantage of that! Wednesday was my mom's birthday so I made her a Tex-Mex breakfast of breakfast tacos and then we went to another hot yoga class. It's good to spend some quality time together. I actually got to ride outside on Wednesday because a lot of the snow had melted so the roads were mostly safe for a wimpy, Texas-based cyclist. It wasn't too bad at all and I think I'll be able to manage my 4.5 hours in the cold tomorrow.

Yesterday was some more early training, perhaps New Moon with my mom, some hair chopping, and a bit more hanging out with Brenna before she leaves Fort Collins for the holiday. Today my mom and I did a hot yoga class and the heater was actually working. It was so hot and I was so sweaty but it felt really great. I definitely need to bring a towel next time because I slipped out of Wheel Pose. I was able to make some good progress on some stuff for Texas Cycling training camp as well as some job stuff which has been looming over my head. A bike shop in town here, Lee's, had a sweet 1-hour bike sale of 40% off of everything in the store so I was able to stock up on new training tires, cables, cleats, etc. for hopefully a good portion of the season.

It's finally starting to feel a bit like a the break now that things are slowing down. Tomorrow should be another great day with a long ride all morning, perhaps I'll check a couple things of my to-do list in the afternoon, and some Christmas tree decorating in the evening. Sounds like a plan. I love it here in Colorado and I'd definitely love to live here someday!